MESQUITE — A Garland police officer is on restricted duty after authorities say he fired as many as 41 shots at an apparently unarmed man last month, killing him.

Garland police also said Tuesday that dash-cam video revealed that Officer Patrick Tuter crashed his squad car into a truck driven by the suspect, Michael Vincent Allen, before the shooting started. Initial reports had said Allen had hit Tuter’s car, prompting the officer to open fire.

“It’s still under investigation,” said Garland police spokesman Officer Joe Harn. “We’re trying to find out exactly why he started shooting.”

Tuter’s attorney, John Snider, said the answer is simple.

“At some point, while trying to prevent the suspect from making an escape, Officer Tuter did feel in fear for his life and was justified in firing his weapon,” Snider said.

According to authorities, Snider and witnesses, the events leading to the shooting began just after midnight on Aug. 31 when Tuter noticed a white GMC pickup that had been involved in a previous chase with Sachse police.

Officers tried to stop the truck at First Street and Avenue B, but the 25-year-old Allen fled. Dallas County sheriff’s deputies joined the chase when the truck crossed into Mesquite. After a 30-minute pursuit with speeds reaching up to 100 mph, Allen turned into a cul-de-sac in the 3000 block of Monarch Court.

That’s where police initially said Allen made a U-turn and hit a squad car as officers tried to box him in. But Tuesday’s updated account by police, confirmed by Snider, indicates that the police hit Allen’s car and then fatally shot him. A 20-year-old woman in the pickup with him was uninjured and is considered a witness.

It is unclear whether any officers ordered Allen to exit his vehicle before the shooting began. Investigators have not discovered a weapon on either Allen or the passenger, but Snider said his client, a seven-year veteran of the force, felt threatened.

“He believed the suspect had a gun,” Snider said. “He believed he had a gun based on the situation and the suspect’s actions.”

Snider did not dispute Garland police’s contention that Tuter fired up to 41 rounds from his department-issued semiautomatic weapon. Harn said the officer — who was the only officer to fire a weapon during the incident — “did have to reload” to get off that many shots.

Monica Zabrano, Allen’s 22-year-old girlfriend, said Tuesday that he had left her house just hours before the shooting, but had planned to return. She said that she never believed the initial police account of what happened.

“I know Michael,” Zabrano said. “He would not try to hit a police car. Violence was not in his nature.”

Allen has had numerous previous run-ins with the law, including arrests for evading police, drug possession and assault. Zabrano said she believes those encounters with police may have played a role in his death.

“I believe they shot him because he’s gotten away from them before,” she said. “When Michael feels threatened, he gets out of there. He gets to where he doesn’t feel threatened. He was trying to get to where he felt safe.”

Mitchell Wallace and his family live next door to where the chase ended, and Wallace had no trouble believing the report that up to 41 shots were fired.

“There was a pause in between the firing that made me believe he was reloading,” Wallace said.

After Allen pulled into a driveway at the end of a cul-de-sac in an attempt to make a U-turn, his truck was pinned between two police cars with one of the police cars striking Allen’s truck from the front, said Wallace’s 17-year-old son, Cameron.

“From the time they yelled, ‘Get out, get out,’ they didn’t give him three seconds to get out,” Mitchell Wallace said, adding that he counted about 20 bullet holes in Allen’s truck.

Wallace and his wife were asleep when the gunshots began, but they quickly made it to the porch to see Allen’s passenger being pulled from the truck and a police dog jumping into the cab. The German shepherd bit Allen in the neck and jaw area and dragged him out of the truck and onto the pavement, Wallace said.

Police officers pulled the dog off, flipped Allen on his stomach and handcuffed him before checking his pulse. Autopsy results are pending on the cause of Allen’s death.

Wallace took cellphone pictures and video after the shooting stopped, but he said Mesquite police confiscated the phone and deleted the video and pictures. The phone was returned four days later, he said.

Snider said that Tuter, who married recently, is cooperating fully with both the criminal investigation by Mesquite as well as the internal affairs investigation being conducted by Garland police to determine whether the officer violated departmental rules.

Mesquite will present its findings to the Dallas County district attorney’s office, which will decide whether to take the case to a grand jury.

At least one Garland official is hoping for a thorough review of the situation.

“Some of the allegations regarding this incident do raise questions that need to be carefully examined,” said City Council member Rick Williams. “I have complete faith that Police Chief Mitch Bates and his staff will do a thorough investigation and provide an impartial and complete determination once the investigation is finished.”